1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to attachments for skid steer or other front end loaders. More particularly, the present invention relates to a device for digging, dislodging and/or moving rocks, stumps, and other similar large and bulky debris found in fields, yards, etc. Specifically, the present invention is a rock and other debris digger with a plurality of tines for digging, dislodging, and/or lifting the rock or other debris and a plurality of grapple forks pivotally affixed to the digger frame for grabbing the rock or other debris by pivoting the forks until the rock or debris is pinned therebetween so as to be secured for lifting and moving.
2. Background Information
For thousands of years, farmers have cleared land for farming. Often the fields to be farmed includes rocks, tree stumps, and other debris. These rocks and stumps make farming difficult because the rocks and stumps must either be avoided or else damage to the farm equipment such as plows often results.
For this reason, farmers have sought to remove these rocks and stumps using any available equipment including manually digging with shovels or more recently using backhoes and other construction equipment. However, backhoes and other construction equipment are expensive to own or rent, and often are not readily available. In addition, this equipment is difficult to transport into and use in the fields.
However, the rocks are often large enough that without such heavy duty equipment, the rocks and debris are difficult, if not impossible, to remove. Even today with the use of tractors and other farm equipment readily available on the farm, farm, it is often difficult and time consuming to dig out, dislodge and then lift out many of the rocks encountered in the fields since the larger rocks may be one to several feet in diameter and weigh several hundred pounds or more. Also, farm equipment is not designed for such work and is thus often inadequate to dislodge rocks that are substantially buried.
Other machinery exists as indicated above that will assist in such removal such as construction equipment including backhoes. However, all of the presently available equipment is large, bulky and otherwise not easy to transport and use in the remote fields. As is well known in the art, backhoes require trailers for transport and are not readily available on farms.
Recently, smaller construction vehicles often referred to as skid steer loaders and front end loaders are becoming readily available on the farm. These small construction vehicles are multi-functional and are finding lots of uses on today's farms as buckets, augers, trenchers, mini-backhoes, concrete breakers, planers, saws, rollers, stump grinders, pelletized material movers, brooms, sweepers, log handlers, bundled material or loose intertwined material handlers (baled hay, bundled hay, loose straw and/or manure movers), landscape rakes, rock and debris rakes, box scrapers, tillers, and scarifiers to name a few.
These smaller construction vehicles are also becoming actively used by landscapers, construction contractors, and road crews, as well as farmers. However, in each of these applications the users still do not have a good attachment for removal of rocks, stumps, and other debris from the ground, particularly when such rocks, stumps, and debris are substantially buried in the ground as is typical. Similarly these users such as landscapers do not have a good attachment for the lofting and positioning of items such as landscaping rocks, etc.
The present status of the prior art for removal of rocks, stumps, and other debris which is embedded or substantially buried in the ground, is primarily backhoes which as stated above are not readily available in many areas such as farms, are expensive to own or rent, are often large and heavy equipment that may not be capable of traversing the necessary terrain to get to the digging site, and are not optimized to pick up and move any rock that it digs up. The present attachments for the skid steer loaders and front end loaders do not provide the ability to pierce the ground, loosen the soil around the rock, dig up the rock, dislodge the rock, reach under the rock and grab or otherwise secure the rock, lift the rock, and move the rock (or carefully position the rock such as in a landscaping environment). This ability is desired by farmers, landscapers, construction workers, road crews, and others but is yet unrealized by backhoes, skid steer loaders, front end loaders, etc.